David Krňanský / Black Hole Generation: The Kings Are Back / The Dot Project, London, 8.02-20.03.2017

“The Kings are Back is an exhibition of Black Hole Generation’s examination of contemporary culture and its propensity to overload us with visual stimulation.

The exhibition features twelve new paintings and six prints from Krňanský, Lukáč and Reichel. The paintings suggest much but disclose very little. Although visual clues lie within the canvases – arrows that point to something and tracks that could lead somewhere – much is left unsolved. Bright colours are always met with darker ones that hide and obscure. The playful shapes in Krňanský’s paintings are covered by black, blue or red. In Lukáč’s paintings, primary colours are hidden under thick black marks. In Reichel’s paintings, vivid oranges, pinks and yellows are met with deep blues, purples and greens. It is as if the works are asking us to decode something while at the same time destroying any progress we might make. Exhibited in the lower gallery, prints on canvas reflect an era of overproduction and digital reducibility. It is an attempt at the possibility of maintaining the atmospheric state of the paintings outside of their original body. Equally, this method overrides the originals by creating a new language through printing.

The work in The Kings are Back plays with our expectations about what painting asks of us and what we ask of painting. While each artist’s work displays a clear style, the paintings have been made in dialogue with each other and should be seen as a visual collaboration. However, such visual symmetry should not be taken at face value. We are deliberately led down paths that take us nowhere or shown symbols that we cannot decipher. Although symmetry may first appear, a closer examination reveals puzzles and a playful allusiveness at the heart of Black Hole Generation’s work.